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Chef BBQ (Tickets on Sale) Just One Reason I'm a Green City Market Fan
- Bob Benenson
- 5 minutes ago
- 4 min read
Non-Profit Local Food Advocate Holds Its Big Fundraiser on September 10
First, the news... As we previewed yesterday (May 31), Chicago's Green City Market has opened early bird ticket sales for the 2026 rendition of its spectacular annual feast/fundraiser, the Chef BBQ, which takes place on the evening of Thursday, September 10. Click the link below to get your ticket(s) — early bird discounts run through June 21 — and reserve your place for this hugely popular event.
If you know, you know, and whether you are a regular or have even been to this event once, you know: This is simply the biggest and grandest local food tasting event in Chicago each year. If you are a local food lover, you should go at least once if you can. With more than 100 of the region's best restaurants, all using ingredients produced by local farms; rare opportunities to meet some of Chicago's most legendary chefs; and great adult beverages, it's a event you'll remember.
It is also a great example of a virtuous indulgence, as it is the biggest annual fundraiser for the non-profit Green City Market organization. Green City has been a trailblazer in the local and national farmers market community since it was founded in 1999, setting the standard for producer-only markets and defining a Chicago foodshed sourcing region in the four states (Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan and Indiana) surrounding Lake Michigan.
In the years since, it has been an engine of support for the rising local food movement, providing city folks like me with access to the freshest, most delicious, nutritious, and sustainably and humanely produced food while enabling local farmers, both rural and urban, to survive and thrive.
The market is also a leader in promoting access for those enduring food insecurity. One of the first markets in the region to accept food assistance benefits (federal SNAP and Illinois Link) as payments, it has within the past few years been one of the few markets anywhere that triples the value of those benefits. The market also has an educational mission, teaching our youngest eaters about good food through its Club Sprouts program.
There is also a personal angle to why I write so much about Green City Market in Local Food Forum. It has been our local market since we moved to Chicago 15 years ago (Barb and I live about two miles north of Green City's flagship location in Lincoln Park). When I make my planned market run this Saturday (June 6), it will be the exact anniversary of my first visit in 2012.
I had resigned from a 30-year career as a political journalist in Washington, D.C. before we moved here. Although I came with a lifelong passion for food and a strong interest in the movement to build a better food system, it took me a while to go all in on a second career as an advocate, so I was really at square one that day 14 years ago.
It was kind of an ironic year for a newcomer to commit to advocating for this region's local farmers. A March heat wave of an intensity never before or since seen in this region, a week of temperatures in the upper 80s, prompted fruit trees to start flowering earlier. Then a hard freeze hit in late April, literally nipping these trees in the bud — and as a result, there was hardly any fruit at Chicago markets that year.
If that weren't enough, the region was hit by a severe drought, as you may be able to tell from the parched earth in the above photo — the first of what must be hundreds I've taken at stands of Nichols Farm & Orchard of Marengo, Illinois, the region's largest diversified produce farm.
Yet even in that subpar growing season, Green City Market and its friendly vendors made this new kid in town feel welcome and appreciated, which is something for which I will always be grateful.
Green City Market has been popular since its start, but its role in providing access to delicious, local, sustainably produced food to consumers during the COVID pandemic took it to the next level. As the above photo taken early in the morning last Saturday (May 30) shows, the walkways at the Lincoln Park location are packed with people (and many of their dogs)... and it's not even peak growing season.
Since I can't write about a visit without a photo of my market haul:
I try to spread my spending around, so clockwise from the top of the toaster: pasture-raised eggs from Jake's Country Meats (Cassapolis, Michigan); cherry tomatoes and hakurei turnips from Frillman Farms (Berrien Springs, Michigan); cremini mushooms from River Valley Ranch (Burlington, Wisconsin); green and purple asparagus from Ellis Family Farms (Benton Harbor, Michigan); hothouse heirloom tomatoes from Nichols; and strawberries from Mick Klug Farm (St. Joseph, Michigan).
The rhubarb came from the nice folks at Los Rodriguez Farm (Eau Claire, Michigan) at The Lincoln Park Farmers Market, another favorite that is the popular neighborhood-scale market located just 3/4-mile west of Green City Market. Managed by the extraordinary Elsa Jacobson, the market has some folks who are very talented at chalk art, so we'll end with this:
For the rest of this week's regional market schedule...